


Undecided

by leigh57



Category: Law & Order: SVU
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-22
Updated: 2013-05-22
Packaged: 2017-12-12 15:34:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,325
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/813171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leigh57/pseuds/leigh57
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Elliot is a douche. He and Olivia have a conversation. ATTMO. (No, not a good summary?)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Undecided

**Author's Note:**

> This is another story I'm popping up here for archival purposes, given that apparently svufic is permanently dead. I thought maybe it had just taken another haitus, but my sources say otherwise!
> 
> And no matter how long it's been, I still gotta send the love to A, J, and K for making these stories happen.

Elliot sat, alone at the round coffee shop table, sipping black coffee and toying with the edge of a napkin as he watched that weird moment of light that lasts approximately two minutes while the last edge of the sun works its way below the skyline. He wasn’t thinking about the sun or even the light especially – just about the fact that the early change to daylight savings time had fucked with his internal clock, which made it even harder for him to haul his ass out of bed in the morning. Exactly what he needed under the current circumstances.

 

He glanced at his watch. 7:15. Forty-five minutes before he was supposed to be meeting Kathy for a drink. And five minutes after he had called to cancel on her. Work, he’d said, then felt like shit for lying.

 

He felt like shit a lot lately. In fact, he’d felt like shit a lot for easily two years now, with the exception of a couple days or weeks here and there. The odd thing was that while some people keep feeling like shit for the same reason all the time, he at least had the distinction of being able to say that his excuses for feeling shitty were varied and sometimes even unpredictable.

 

Well, some of them.

 

Twisted though it was, he wished he were at a crime scene, his focus obsessively concentrated on each miniscule bit of evidence, the work so consuming that nothing else had the slightest chance of sneaking into his consciousness. That way, he wouldn’t be sitting here at this stupid table, with way too much free time, thinking about crap he would have preferred to forget indefinitely.

 

Given the way his life normally worked, at this exact moment he should have been close to euphoria. Today, action at the 1-6 had been so nonexistent that he’d filled out paperwork from 4-6:30, giving up only when he realized that he was actually done. Of course, he’d only realized this because Olivia had looked up from her computer all of the sudden and said, “Didn’t you say you wanted to go home and change before your drink with Kathy?”

 

He couldn’t pinpoint why the nonchalance in her voice – the way she tossed out the words the same way she’d say, “Did you get Warner’s report on the Harrison case?” – caused his stomach to move out of place with sickening speed. But rather than open his mouth and tell her the truth, he nodded enthusiastically as if he’d just forgotten; then he put away his pens, stacked his paperwork unnaturally neatly on the desk, cleaned up the desktop on his computer, and finally yanked his coat off the back of his chair. “See you tomorrow,” he’d said.

 

“Yeah,” she’d mumbled through the pencil in her mouth. She hadn’t even looked up.

 

Elliot stared down at the half-eaten bran muffin in front of him and took another long swallow of coffee. He didn’t even know what kind it was – probably coffee of the day, since he couldn’t recall specifying. But it tasted unnaturally good to him, as if whoever made it had ground the beans to exactly the right consistency and used the perfect ratio of coffee to water.

 

He remembered any average day five or ten years ago, when he was the first person up in the morning, making coffee in the semi-darkness. Occasionally, Kathy would come downstairs, her plum-colored bathrobe hastily knotted, her hair still rumpled from rubbing against the pillow all night, and say, after he handed her a mug and she took her first sip, “Wow. What’d you do this time?” As if he’d been standing there at 5 a.m., planning to make sure the coffee was extra special for that Tuesday.

 

The truth was that he didn’t want to have a drink with Kathy. But the most irritating part of the truth was that he had no idea why.

 

Originally, when he’d asked to move back in, his theory had gone something like this: With the exception of his anger management problem, he’d been a relatively content guy until his wife walked out on him one day. So, logically, the solution to the total lack of contentment he’d felt over the past two years was to put things back the way they had been before. Like when you get bored with the furniture configuration and rearrange it, only to realize that now you constantly smack your shins on the coffee table and have to walk all the way around the couch in order to get a beer.

 

He picked up the muffin, took a large bite, and contemplated the trails of half-dried coffee that decorated the side of his cup. When he heard her voice, he almost jumped.

 

“Hey.” Olivia stood before him, looking significantly more agitated than she had when he’d left the precinct less than an hour ago. Her jaw was set at an odd angle, and he knew instantly that he was going to strongly dislike whatever came out of her mouth next.

 

Still, in the interest of being polite, he swallowed as quickly as possible and said, “Hey. What are you doing here?”

 

“Nice try, but I think that’s my line.” She yanked out the chair across from his and sat down. The floor squeaked as she hauled the chair closer to the table.

 

“Huh?” Elliot couldn’t quite account for the fact that, although he was only drinking coffee, he felt less capable of processing information than he often did after three beers.

 

“Kathy called the precinct.” Olivia looked evenly at him. To anyone else, her face would have appeared expressionless, but he could see the microscopic furrow between her eyes and the way she was biting the inner edge of her lip.

 

He held her gaze defiantly, then took another swallow of coffee and didn’t reply.

 

“Apparently,” Olivia continued, “she was under the impression that you had to cancel your ‘date’ because of this _intense_ case we’re working.” Her voice was still even (though coated with sugary sarcasm), but her irritation was so tangible that Elliot amused himself with the mental image of kinda compacting it and stirring it into his coffee. Maybe that would help him scare a confession out of the next asshole he held hostage in interrogation.

 

“And you said?” His voice came out sounding much pissier than he had intended.

 

“I said that you’d left at 6:30 and were currently sitting in a coffee shop choking to death on a bran muffin.” Olivia twisted out of her coat, hung it on the back of her chair, and glanced over toward the counter. After a beat, she fixed her eyes on him again. “Actually, I said, ‘Oh, I’m so sorry Kathy. This case has everybody running in circles. I’m sure he’ll call as soon as he gets the chance.’ Then I hung up and invented creative chains of profanity, which I hurled at you in my head. What the hell is. . . “

 

Mercifully, the waitress cut Olivia off just as the decibel levels were beginning to escalate. “What can I get for you?”

 

Elliot took a deep breath and hoped that the momentary distraction would take her down a notch, simultaneously reminding himself that he was talking about Olivia, which probably made that an idiotic thought.

 

Olivia rearranged her expression and said, her voice neutral, “I’ll have a double-tall decaf latte made with the organic beans, and a blueberry scone.”

 

The waitress nodded distractedly, already glancing off to the next set of customers who had just seated themselves a few tables away. “I’ll be back in two minutes.”

 

“Thanks.” Olivia tossed out an obligatory smile, which faded the moment she turned her face back toward Elliot. But at least she kept her voice down this time as she asked, “What the hell is going on with you?”

 

Elliot leaned forward suddenly. “Nothing. I’m sitting here having a cup of coffee and a muffin. That’s it.”

 

Olivia reached for a sugar packet and slapped it back and forth against the tip of her index finger. “I can see that your recent chat with Rebecca has vastly improved your communication skills.”

 

Elliot opened his mouth to say something provocative and obnoxious, but suddenly, he felt like one of those Christmas snow globes Maureen loved, only the snow was all stuck at the bottom and no one was around to shake it back to life. He didn’t have the energy to fight with her anymore. His coffee cup made a dull thud as it hit the table. “I’m fine, Liv. It’s got nothing to do with you anyway. Go home and enjoy the evening off.”

 

_If you don’t shut up Stabler, you’ll have to take an entire day off work to get through your next confession. “Bless me Father, for I have lied. Sixty billion times. My first lie was. . . “_

 

Olivia hadn’t moved. Around them, Elliot listened to the clinking of forks against plates, the hum of conversations that ran together and made it impossible to pick out any single thread of discussion, the vibration of traffic flowing by outside the window. The waitress came and deposited Olivia’s coffee and scone on the table with a perfunctory, “Can I get you anything else?” Olivia merely shook her head and tore open the sugar packet she had been slapping, dumping it into the coffee.

 

Elliot raised an eyebrow. “Why didn’t you get a shot of vanilla or something?”

 

“Because I like it this way. Stop changing the subject.” She pulled off a piece of the scone and popped it into her mouth as she continued to stare at him, and he suddenly wished quite forcefully that she would magically vanish. But. . . not exactly because he didn’t want her there.

 

Maybe because he did. _Fuck_.

 

“What was the subject again?” He fidgeted against the seat, wishing that there were cushions or something.

 

Olivia stopped moving entirely, breathing quietly as she watched him. The anger was gone, replaced with something like resignation. “Are you planning to be a prick all night, or just for another few minutes?” she asked quietly. “Because I’ve got some shit to pick up at the dry cleaner’s and I’m out of half and half.”

 

 _Well get your fucking creamer then._ He thought it, but again, the energy to make the words exit his mouth failed him. “Sorry,” he muttered. His coffee was barely lukewarm now, but he drank more anyway.

 

“It’s okay. Tell me what’s going on with Kathy.”

 

_I said I wanted to move back home, but I don’t. I fucking need to tell her, but I can’t._

 

He cleared his throat. “What did you tell Hendricks when she asked you whether you’d save a vic or me?”

 

Olivia’s twirled her spoon through her coffee in slow circles, waiting a moment before she looked up. When her eyes met his again she said hesitantly, “How do you know she asked me that?”

 

Elliot laughed. “Because she asked me. I figured she had a list of questions. Scientific method. Huang always has a list.”

 

Olivia stuck the last tiny bite of scone into her mouth and said through the crumbs, “What did you say?”

 

“The truth. I saved you and the kid died.” The waitress appeared suddenly, and Elliot leaned back so that she could refill his coffee cup. When she walked away, he said firmly, “Your turn.”

 

Olivia smiled uncomfortably. “I didn’t answer her. I left.”

 

“Why? You don’t know?”

 

“I do know.” Her response was immediate.

 

Mysteriously, Elliot felt some of his energy returning, so he flashed her his most infuriating grin. “So what’s the answer then?”

 

Olivia stood up so suddenly that Elliot instinctively backed up an inch or so. She didn’t surprise him all that often anymore, and he hadn’t expected the question to push her buttons quite that much.

 

“I came to tell you about Kathy. Which I’ve done. I’ll see you tomorrow.” She pulled her coat off the back of the chair and walked out, her hand connecting with the door so forcefully that it slammed the brick wall outside before slapping shut again.

 

For several minutes, Elliot stared intently at the seat across from him, at the empty space where Olivia had been, as if maybe just concentrating hard enough would give him the answers. However, given that he still wasn’t one hundred percent sure he even knew the question, he finally swallowed the remainder of his coffee in a few oversized gulps, then walked outside, letting the wind blast him as he hit the speed dial for Kathy’s number on his cell.

 

________________

 

 _Thump thump thump thump thump_. Elliot’s gloved knuckles impacted Olivia’s apartment door softy, but repeatedly. He shivered and stared at the nondescript brown indoor-outdoor carpeting on the hallway floor as he waited for any sign of life within the apartment. Nothing. He knocked again. This time he was rewarded with a slam, followed by what sounded like a muffled curse, but he couldn’t be sure. A moment later Olivia yanked the door open. Her expression almost made him turn around, but it was too late now, and given that he’d been drinking coffee for three hours straight, he couldn’t differentiate between nervousness and the massive jolt of caffeine.

 

“Elliot, it’s. . . “ She glanced across the room toward her VCR. “3:25. Go away. I’m exhausted and I have to get up early to do the dry cleaner’s and half and half before work.” Her bangs stuck out at an odd angle, and Elliot realized how long it had been since he’d seen her with her hair down. She shivered in a dark green polartec bathrobe, and he couldn’t help grinning when he saw that her feet were bare. She had a little crease down the side of her cheek, presumably from where her face had been pressed into the pillow, and Elliot found himself clenching his fist so that he wouldn’t reach out and trace his finger over it.

 

“I need to talk to you. Can I come in for a few minutes?” His heart was beating way too fast and his stomach burned; he wished he’d thought to get some soup with all that coffee. Cream of potato maybe.

 

She sighed and rubbed her fingers over her eyes, leaving tiny smudges of yesterday’s mascara. “I guess. God. This can’t wait ‘til morning?” She moved out of the way so he could step inside.

 

Elliot took several steps forward and stopped uncertainly, bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet. Before it occurred to him that Olivia was waiting for him to say something, he absorbed his surroundings for a moment, noticing even by the soft light of the single lamp that her apartment was so much, well – cleaner – than his. Her remotes were actually on top of the television, and there weren’t any dirty sweatshirts decorating the back of the couch. She had a couple books stacked carefully on top of one another on her end table, and from what he could see in the kitchen, the only thing out of place was a solitary mug sitting in the corner of her sink. The random and disturbing thought that the place would look a lot different if he lived here with her flashed into his mind, unsettling him even further. As he concentrated on trying to permanently delete that image from his brain, he felt Olivia’s hand slam down on his shoulder. Hard.

 

“Elliot. Will you _please_ relax? You’re giving me a headache. I just got out of bed. Stop bouncing and sit down. How much coffee did you drink?”

 

He stilled himself, watching her face as he tried to remember. After a pause, he stepped over to the couch and sat down. “A lot. Too much. I went back to the coffee shop after Kathy’s. Stayed there for uh. . . maybe three hours.”

 

Olivia raised an eyebrow. “Smart.” She pulled the tie on her robe tighter, and sat down a few feet away from him, her feet tucked beneath her. “So why were you at Kathy’s after you went to all the trouble of ditching her earlier?”

 

Elliot’s throat felt as if he’d swallowed one of those huge multivitamins sideways. But he’d come here to tell her the truth and at this point, he didn’t care how uncomfortable he was, as long as he spit it out. “I told her I wasn’t coming back.”

 

Olivia coughed. “You’re joking, right?”

 

Fighting to remain stationary, the nervous energy still making him want to jump up and pace, Elliot asked, “Why would you say that?”

 

“Forget it,” Olivia muttered, fiddling with the fabric of her robe.

 

“No. _No._ Tell me why you said that.”

 

“Elliot, just think about this for a minute. Kathy left two years ago. You screwed around about signing the divorce papers for so long that she asked for _my_ help to get you to do it. Then you signed them, and five minutes later you were at her doorstep asking for her to take you back. I’d have told you to go fuck yourself, but it’s not my problem. But after all the crap I’ve watched over the past two years, don’t sit here and expect me to believe you when you say that it’s just over, okay? Because if you were going to ditch your marriage, you would have done it a long time ago.”

 

It took Elliot a second to realize that she had stopped talking. A handful of her robe was clutched in her fingers, and she was breathing quickly, as if she’d said all those words in a single breath.

 

“I should have done it a long time ago.” He pressed his palms into his thighs, still working to keep himself from fidgeting.

 

Olivia stood up and stepped backwards a few paces. “I really don’t feel like getting into this right now,” she said, and while her voice was so soft that he could barely make out the words, her anger was so palpable that he thought he might have been able to touch it if she were standing a bit closer. “You’re high on caffeine,” she continued, slightly louder, “and you probably haven’t slept in 24 hours. So to you, it seems like a great idea to show up at my door and share. Only I don’t feel like sharing anymore. You’re gonna go back. So cut the bullshit, go home, get some sleep, and call her in the morning.”

 

Unexpectedly, Elliot felt himself calming. “I’m _not_. I’m not going back.” The finality of his words jolted him as they formed in his mouth and hung in the air. He stretched, his back in knots from too much time spent pressed against the hard-backed chair in the coffee shop. If he ever went to bed he knew he’d wake up seriously sore. “Liv. Sit down for one more minute.”

 

She stared at him, clearly exhausted and confused. But more than that, wary. Guarded. Skeptical.

 

“Give me two more minutes to get this out.” He could tell she was still undecided. “Please.”

 

 _Please_.

 

The television emitted a random cracking sound. Olivia glanced at it and stood unmoving for a few more seconds before she finally stepped forward and reseated herself on the couch. This time though, her posture was anything but relaxed. Feet flat on the ground, back straight.

 

Elliot sighed. _You’re not going to make this easy, are you? And you shouldn’t_.

 

“Two minutes, El. I want to go to bed.”

 

“I know. I’ll be quick.” He tried to clear away the knot in his throat, as he thought of the fifty different ways he could explain what had happened to him after she stormed out of the coffee shop. He hated talking about this shit. Always had. But despite the fact that he wasn’t an introspective guy, he knew himself well enough to be aware that if he didn’t take some sort of stab at an explanation, right now, this moment wasn’t coming back. She was shutting down by the second, even as he desperately tried to formulate words that might make sense out of the whole fucked up situation.

 

“Elliot. Talk.” Her words sounded hardass, but her voice shook just a little, and Elliot quelled the smile that threatened to sneak out. That would _really_ piss her off.

 

“I am. Okay.” He inhaled deeply one more time, breathing the leftover scent of whatever candle Olivia must have been burning before she went to sleep (cedar, maybe?), and dove in. “Kathy and the kids were my definition. I don’t know how else to explain it. When work sucked so much that I wasn’t sure I could get up in the morning, I’d go home, crack open their bedroom doors, watch the kids sleeping for a minute. . . “He broke off, wanting like hell to stop speaking, knowing that he couldn’t. “That. . . that was enough to get me through another day.”

 

Olivia nodded quietly, waiting for him to continue. She was listening, but she wasn’t going to help.

 

“Then she left.” Elliot’s voice was flat. “And uh, I saw my kids maybe for a couple hours every weekend, maybe once every two weeks. I couldn’t think of myself as that guy anymore. And at first I let it go, because I was pissed off, because I knew that Kathy and I weren’t working. But after awhile, I guess I thought. . . that um, maybe if I could put things back like they were, I could be that guy again. The guy with . . . I don’t know. . . a clear definition.” He smiled slightly. “Stupid. I know.”

 

Olivia didn’t respond to that, wouldn’t let him pull her in before he was finished. “And now?” she prompted. She didn’t sound angry anymore.

 

“Now?” Elliot rubbed his hand over his chin. “Tonight I figured out that it’s never gonna work. Kathy and I are done. I’m being a jackass and she deserves better, so I went and told her that.” He laughed, the excess coffee and nervous energy taking over. “So,” he continued, trying to sound decisive. “I’m just gonna have to uh, get a different definition or something. Or not have one. Whatever.”

 

Olivia looked at him quietly, taking in his words, her expression one that for once, he couldn’t readily interpret. Finally she said, her voice fuzzy with exhaustion, “Your family was never your only definition. You know?”

 

_Yeah. I do know._

 

He pushed himself off the couch, feeling the beginning of the crash he knew was bound to end as one of the most horrifying caffeine withdrawals in history. “I should go. I’m. . . I’m sorry for waking you up. Just didn’t want to leave things the way they were in the coffee shop. Felt like I owed you an explanation.”

 

She grinned this time, and he noticed that the crease on her cheek had almost vanished. “It’s okay. I wasn’t sleeping that well anyway.” She followed a few paces behind him as he walked toward the door. When they got there he turned and looked at her, watching her face that had changed in so many ways over the years, but had paradoxically remained exactly the same, unlike anything else in his fucked up life.

 

He had no idea what gave him the balls to do it, but suddenly he leaned forward, took her face in his hands, and touched his lips to hers. Just once. He tasted mint toothpaste, and he fully expected her to shove him away and commence yelling about how he still had no clue what the fuck he was doing (which was true). But she didn’t move. She watched him, her eyes inches from his and oddly shiny, his hands still framing her face. Finally she stepped back a foot or so. His fingers grazed the sleeves of her robe as she slipped out of his grasp.

 

“Goddamnit,” she muttered, the word almost swallowed even as she said it.

 

 _Shit_. “I’m sorry,” he responded automatically, even though that was yet another lie he’d have to add to his impressively long list.

 

“Elliot.”

 

“What?”

 

“If you’re actually sorry for that, I wish you’d never knocked on the door.”

 

 _Tell her you lied. Quick._ “I lied. I’m not sorry.”

 

“Okay then. Go home.” He could see the corner of her lip twitching.

 

“Yeah,” he said, his voice sandpapery. “Thank you. For listening.” _Just like you always do, whether I want you to or not_.

 

She nodded. Said nothing.

 

“See you tomorrow.” He quickly turned and walked out, before he managed to do something else unexpected or problematic. Behind him he thought he might have heard the gentle thud of her back against the door.

 

________________

 

Elliot slammed the car door shut, stuck the keys in the ignition, and started the engine. But he couldn’t stop thinking about the one thing he’d meant to ask her again. The question she’d dodged with Rebecca. With him. His fingers were dialing her cell before he could stop himself.

 

 _Ring. Ring. Ring. Ring._ He turned up the heat and rubbed his freezing free hand against his jeans. “Elliot, go _away_. I just got back in bed.” She was grumpy, but amused this time.

 

“I’m going. I just need to know the answer.”

 

Silence. He could hear her breathing, the tiny squeak of the mattress as she shifted in bed. More silence. He waited. He could be _so_ patient when he wanted to.

 

“God you’re an asshole. You.” She disconnected immediately.

 

Elliot pushed the end call button and threw the cell into the passenger seat. For a few more minutes, he sat still, thinking about eight hundred things he never would have considered had he not been coming down off the world’s worst caffeine high. He thought about definitions, and mint toothpaste, and the idea that maybe being in control of everything was highly overrated. Eventually, he shoved the gearshift into drive, and hit the gas.


End file.
